BALLSTON SPA — Criminal charges will not be filed in the death of an 85-year-old resident of the Maplewood Manor Nursing Home in Ballston who was found last month in the outdoor courtyard there, according to the Saratoga County District Attorney's Office.

The probe determined that Decker, who was frail and used a walker, did not fall from his second-floor window or a rooftop, as first thought, but instead appears to have gotten outside because he knew the bypass alarm code to the locked doors and then boarded an elevator down to the first floor.

The octogenarian, known by his nickname Fred, died at 1:55 a.m. Dec. 22 at Saratoga Hospital from a heart attack.

Nursing home staff saw Decker in his room during an 11 p.m. round of bed checks, according to an earlier statement released by the county Board of Supervisors after his death. Employees discovered him missing at 1 a.m., and located him near a facility door with his walker.

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An autopsy revealed that Decker suffered from severe osteoporosis, and he would have had numerous broken bones and fractures had he fallen or dropped even a short distance. Additionally, the fact that he used a walker made it virtually impossible for him to slip out through the window across a rooftop and down onto the pavement below.

"The investigation was unable to rule out the possibility that the victim knew the bypass alarm code to the unit doors as suggested by the patient's granddaughter," the police report states.

The granddaughter is an employee at Maplewood Manor.

Decker, formerly of Ballston Lake, lived in Maplewood Manor nearly four years.

The probe found that staff members sitting at the nurses' station could not have seen the hallway of Decker's unit or that they could have been tending to another resident at the time, according to the findings of the probe. It's unclear if the alarm on all the doors on the first floor leading to the outside courtyard were working and secure. Decker had been moved to the secure wing of the nursing home last summer because he would sometimes wander, family members said.

"We owed it to Mr. Decker and his family to try to discover what happened that night," said Murphy in a statement, adding the "investigation finds that Mr. Decker did exit the building via one of the several ground-floor courtyard exit doors."

The Department of Health, Maplewood Manor staff and Saratoga County cooperated fully with the investigation, Murphy said.